The flurry of comment and attention this week to Matthew Robson’s “How Teenagers Consume Media” reminded me of a scene in a movie I once saw.

It was the Beatles 1964 film, “A Hard Day’s Night.” And the scene includes a line of dialog that could be said of Mr. Robson.  It is spoken by the assistant to the marketing director for a line of clothing aimed at teenagers.  The pair mistook George Harrison for a model sent by an agency and asked him his opinion of some shirts.

“They’re grotty,” George says.  “Grotty?”  “Yeah, grotesque.”  The marketing director takes offense and sends Harrison packing, then, in a moment of self-doubt asks, “You don’t think he’s a new phenomenon, do you?”  The assistant replies, “You mean an early clue to the new direction”?

I do not mean to discount the discounting of Twitter in Robson’s analysis and I hope that Matthew has a career as long and successful as Harrison and his mates.  But noting that teenagers will swap new stuff for newer, cooler stuff and that they are reluctant to spend money for the privilege doesn’t feel like new information.

The attention given the report is likely powered more by the uncertainty faced by the companies courting those teenagers.  But our time might be better spent focusing on what has not changed about teens in the last 45 years — the contradictions that drive adoption.

Now, as then, teenagers are anxious to stake out their own territory and belong to a group; they are keen to know first what’s new, but willing to share it fast in their circle; and no matter how bleak the rest of us can make the future seem, they intend to be around long into it.

The companies whose products support, aid and encourage these qualities will do well.  Those that don’t will have to rely on the rest of us to get by.  Ultimately,what Matthew Robson may have captured in his analysis is not so much a snapshot as much it is a frame from a film — building on previous images but moving the story toward an end not yet written.

This is no epitaph, but an opportunity.  As Timbuk3 so eloquently put it at the mid-way point between Harrison and Robson, my future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”